Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Staging the Body of the Lord of the Sevenfold World

    Canepa, Matthew P. 2023. Staging the Body of the Lord of the Sevenfold World. Methectic Spaces and Chiasmatic Viewing in Sasanian Iran. In Michele Bacci, Gohar Grigoryan & Manuela Studer-Karlen (eds.), Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval Cultures: A Comparative Perspective, 25–51. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    This chapter explores the visibility and materiality of the body of the sovereign as a technology of power in Sasanian Iran. Through analysis of a broad array of objects, structures, and landscapes that the royal image inflected, including the living king himself, it approaches the king’s body as both a perceptible and conceptual phenomenon that manifested not only corporeally but also through a continuum of visual, material, spatial, and environmental contexts. These range from the interior spaces of palaces to the very landscape of the Iranian Plateau. The Sasanian king’s audience halls and thrones were legendary in the late antique world, and their memory lingered in medieval European and Islamic ecumenes long after the fall of the empire. Appropriately, the theatrical staging of the king’s body in audience halls and on thrones will be an important focus, as will the attendant architectural, ceremonial, and technological supports, which were deployed to shape and augment the experience of the sovereign’s sacred presence. Moreover, we will consider the role of portable objects – such as textiles, precious-metal vessels, as well as mass media like seals and coinage – in bringing the image of the king before the eyes of his power bases and his populace. Our goal, therefore, is not simply to re-examine the evidence of such phenomena but to reconstruct a broader visuality of power centred on the king’s image.

    This is an open access publication and is available for free download on the publisher's website.

  • The Persian World and Beyond

    Garrison, Mark B. & Wouter F.M. Henkelman (eds.). The Persian world and beyond. Achaemenid and Arsacid studies in honor of Bruno Jacobs (Melammu Workshops and Monographs 6). Münster: Zaphon.

    The 17 essays gathered in this festschrift celebrate the scholarship of Bruno Jacobs. While the range of topics in these essays is extensive, most relate to the Achaemenid world. They represent the diversity of Achaemenid studies as a discipline that Bruno Jacobs enriched with his many contributions and sparkling ideas. Some papers move beyond the Achaemenid period, notably the contribution on Parthian and Elymaean countermarks (S.R. Hauser), and acknowledge the breadth of Bruno Jacob’s research interests, which extend from Greece to eastern Iran, span the Mediterranean Bronze Age to the Roman period, and concern the disciplines of history, archaeology, art history, religion, and Iranology. Among others, M.C. Root examines “Medes and Iranian identity in the Achaemenid social imaginary” as represented in the Persepolis Apadana, while J. Wiesehöfer focusses on “Greek exiles in the Achaemenid Empire” and Chr. J. Tuplin on “The place of Cyropaedia in Xenophon’s oeuvre”. The “winged symbol in Persepolitan glyptic” is debated by M.B. Garrison and the roles of gold and wine in Herodotus’ depiction of the Persians by R. Bichler and K. Ruffing.

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  • ‘The Coals Which Were His Guardians…’:

    Vevaina, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw. 2022. ‘The coals which were his guardians…’: The hermeneutics of Heraclius’ Persian campaign and a faint trace of the ‘Last Great War’ in Zoroastrian literature. In Phil Booth & Mary Whitby (eds.), Mélanges: James Howard-Johnston (Travaux et mémoires 26), 467–490. Paris: Association des Amis du centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance.

    We had previously announced the volume. This article is now available from the author’s academia page.

  • The Syriac Script at Turfan

    Galatello, Martina. 2023. The Syriac Script at Turfan. First Soundings (Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik 90). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

    This is the first book-length palaeographic study of about a thousand fragments in Syriac and Sogdian languages discovered between 1902 and 1914 in the Turfan area on the ancient Northern Silk Roads. This manuscript material, probably dating between the late 8th and 13th /14th centuries, is of utmost relevance for the history of an area that represents a crossroads region of various communities, languages and religions, not least the East Syriac Christian community. Palaeographic factors such as form, modulus, ductus, contrast, spaces between letters and ligatures have been examined. Particularly significant is a peculiar ligature of the letters ṣādē and nūn. One important observation that emerges from this research is the almost total absence of monumental script in favour of mostly cursive forms, most of them East Syriac cursive forms. These represent a valuable source for the study of the history of the East Syriac script due to the paucity of earlier and contemporary East Syriac manuscript evidence from the Middle East, at least before the twelfth century. Moreover, this research sheds light on scribal habits that are highly relevant for a better comprehension of the Sogdian and Syriac-speaking Christian communities, for the history of writing between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and for a greater understanding of the social context in which these and other communities in the same area read, wrote, and shared handwritten texts. This study is part of the FWF stand-alone project “Scribal Habits. A case study from Christian Medieval Central Asia” (PI Chiara Barbati) at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

    • The book is available for free through open access, and you can download it directly from the publisher’s website.

  • Innovation in Persian Period Judah

    Middlemas, Jill. 2023. Innovation in Persian Period Judah: Royal and Temple Ideology in Its Ancient Near East Setting. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

    This volume provides an overview of the attitude towards the monarchy and the temple in Achaemenid Yehud in a comparative perspective. It provides a thorough overview of a series of discussions about the extent of Persian influence on the ideology of Second Temple Judaism by some of the leading experts in the field.

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  • The 9th Ratanbai Katrak Lectures

    Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera (Freie Universität Berlin) will deliver the final three Ratanbai Katrak Lectures this autumn in Oxford.

    These lectures are convened by Prof. Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina for the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

    The talks will also be on Zoom.

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  • Zoroastrian Conversations

    Prof. Yuhan Vevaina will be hosting the 3rd ‘Zoroastrian Conversations’ with Dr. Céline Redard, Lecturer for the Institute of History of Religions at the University of Strasbourg, France.

    Saturday, 07 October 2023; 12 Noon Eastern time; 9 AM Pacific time; and 5pm UK time.

    Zoom Info: https://fezana.org/conversations/

  • Inscriptions from Egypt

    Jansen-Winkeln, Karl. 2023. Inschriften der Spätzeit. Teil V: Die 27.–30. Dynastie und die Argeadenzeit. Band 1: Kambyses – Tachos. Band 2: Nektanebos II. – 4. Jahrhundert insgesamt. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

    Der fünfte Teil der Inschriften der Spätzeit umfasst in 22 Abschnitten (im Anschluss an die vorhergehenden Bände als Nr. 61–82 nummeriert) die Texte vom Beginn der 27. Dynastie (526 v.Chr.) bis zum Beginn der Ptolemäerzeit (305 v.Chr.), wiederum grundsätzlich eingeteilt nach Regierungszeiten: Die Perserkönige der 27. Dynastie von Kambyses bis Artaxerxes II. (dazu die beiden Gegenkönige Petubastis IV. und Psametik IV., Kapitel 61–68), die Könige der 28. bis 31. Dynastie (Kapitel 70–78) sowie die Argeadenkönige (die Dynastie Alexanders des Großen, Kapitel 79–81). Dazu kommen zwei weitere Abschnitte mit den Texten der 27. Dynastie, die sich keiner Regierungszeit zuordnen lassen (Kapitel 69), und denjenigen Inschriften, die zwar sicher oder sehr wahrscheinlich ins 4. Jahrhundert gehören, aber nicht genauer einzuordnen sind (Kapitel 82). Die Sammlung umfasst alle historisch im weitesten Sinne relevanten hieroglyphischen Inschriften, dagegen werden die (für Datierungen wichtigen) demotischen Texte nur mit Literaturangaben erfasst.

    Enthalten sind auch zahlreiche bisher unpublizierte Texte und viele ältere Veröffentlichungen sind kollationiert worden. Ausführliche Indizes erleichtern die Suche nach Denkmälern in Museen, königlichen und nichtköniglichen Personen sowie Regierungsjahren.

  • Cyrus the Great: A Biography of Kingship

    Mitchell, Lynette. 2023. Cyrus the Great: A biography of kingship. New York: Routledge.

    Cyrus the Great was a celebrity of the ancient world, the founder of one of the first world empires in the ancient Near East, whose life and deeds were celebrated through the many stories told about him, then and for millennia.

    This book offers an analysis of these stories, locating them within the rich storytelling cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. Although there are few fixed points in Cyrus’ career, it is possible to see through these narratives the way his kingship developed so he became not just the instrument of the gods, but also their companion. Mitchell explores what these stories reveal about the different societies and cultures who engaged with the mythology surrounding Cyrus in order to examine their own conceptions of great men, leadership, kingship, and power. Such was his celebrity in antiquity that the stories about his kingship have remained influential over the course of two and a half thousand years into the modern era.

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  • Zoroastrian Holy Marriage

    Pirart, Éric. 2023. Hiérogamie mazdéenne. Présentation, texte, traduction et commentaire des deux dernières Gāϑā et de leurs annexes (uniés 51, 52, 53 et 54 du Yasna) (Supplementa 2). Girona: Sociedad de estudios iranios y turanios (SEIT).

    In a radical departure from the method of Jean Kellens, which is both intuitive and reserved, Éric Pirart, with Hiérogamie mazdéenne (Mazdean Hierogamy), revisits the last archaic texts of Zoroastrianism and their appendices (Yasna 51-54), while ensuring that nothing is left untranslated or without grammatical explanation and that the etymology of all the words is examined on the basis of systematic criteria. In these texts, contemporary with the prophet Zaraϑustra, he looks for the features that differentiate them from the rest of Zoroastrian literature.

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